Augusta, with the child by her, sat in the miserable hut attending to Mr. Meeson; while outside the pitiless rain poured down in a steady unceasing sheet of water that came through the wretched roof in streams.  She did her best to keep the dying man dry, but it proved to be almost an impossibility; for even when she succeeded in preventing the wet from falling on him from above, it got underneath him from the reeking floor, while the heavy damp of the air gathered on his garments till they were quite sodden.

As the hours went on his consciousness came back to him, and with it his terror for the end and his remorse for his past life, for alas! the millions he had amassed could not avail him now.

“I am going to die!” he groaned.  “I am going to die, and I’ve been a bad man:  I’ve been the head of a publishing company all my life!”

Augusta gently pointed out to him that publishing was a very respectable business when fairly and properly carried on, and not one that ought to weigh heavy upon a man at the last like the record of a career of successful usury or burgling.

He shook his heavy head.  “Yes, yes,” he groaned; “but Meeson’s is a company and you are talking of private firms.  They are straight, most of them; far too straight, I used always to say.  But you don’t know Meeson’s—­you don’t know the customs of the trade at Meeson’s.”

Augusta reflected that she knew a good deal more about Meeson’s than she liked.

“Listen,” he said, with desperate energy, sitting up upon the sail, “and I will tell you—­I must tell you.”

Asterisks, so dear to the heart of the lady novelist, will best represent the confession that followed; words are not equal to the task.

* * * * *

Augusta listened with rising hair, and realised how very trying must be the life of a private confessor.

“Oh, please stop!” she said faintly, at last.  “I can’t bear it—­I can’t, indeed.”

“Ah!” he said, as he sunk back exhausted.  “I thought that when you understood the customs at Meeson’s you would feel for me in my present position.  Think, girl, think what I must suffer, with such a past, standing face to face with an unknown future!”

Then came a silence.

“Take him away!  Take him away!” suddenly shouted out Mr. Meeson, staring around him with frightened eyes.

“Who?” asked Augusta; “who?”

“Him—­the tall, thin man, with the big book!  I know him; he used to be Number 25—­he died years ago.  He was a very clever doctor; but one of his patients brought a false charge against him and ruined him, so he had to take to writing, poor devil!  We made him edit a medical encyclopaedia—­twelve volumes for L300, to be paid on completion; and he went mad and died at the eleventh volume.  So, of course, we did not pay his widow anything.  And now he’s come for me—­I know he has.  Listen! he’s talking!  Don’t